Impulse bought a GA X99P SLI for $99 Canadian while my local shop was going out of business. Now I gotta choose a CPU for it. I will be doing a blend of creative work with gaming.

My Options as I see it are:
He (the shop) has a 5930K for $450 ($330 USD), doesn’t seem half bad for all the PCI lanes etc. But at that point would I not be better off selling this board I grabbed and going Ryzen?

Xeon ES:
I know Crit made a video on this recently. Does anyone know what the sweetspot would be considered for one of these?

Trying to find a cheap 6800K:
At that point it really seems like Ryzen would make more sense.

I don’t know if it makes sense to build a system around the X99 platform now that Ryzen is out. I currently have a 2500k so I sorely need an upgrade. I can probably sell the board and make $50, so I am not locked to Intel. Any advice. I am not interested in consumer Intel stuff as I really want the extra threads. It’s either Ryzen or cheap X99 stuff. Thanks in advance

It might be wise to ask them what ES cpu’s work on your board. They seem to be a very helpful community. Also, someone who has the same board as you posted on that thread. https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/es-xeon-discussion.5031/page-48 It looks like the 2666 v3 works with the board. On ebay it looks like you can get it from two vendors, one from Japan for $369 USD and one from Texas for $550 USD. I would rather go for the Japan one.

Also ES sample CPU’s may not have all of the features or spec of the final product. For example the 2666 v3 is a 2.9 Ghz cpu but can turbo up to 3.5 across all cores. The ES sample that you may get may not be able to turbo that high.

Looking thru that thread I linked above, early ES samples of the 2666 v3 do not have HTT support.

Excerpt from post #949

The early samples of 2666 v3 do not support HTT (W/O HTT there will be a 10-15% performance hit, depending if the application can utilize HT. Seems that the HTT is greyed out, so it is permanently disabled from the chip.

I believe @Cavemanthe0ne knows more about ES cpu’s more then I do. He talked about them briefly before somewhere else. He might be able to steer you in a better direction.

ES CPUs are pretty much fine. They have odd issues with boost states and things like that but for the most part are going to work just like normal versions of the same CPU.
Only thing I’d say is try to get ones form US, just because shipping is a LOT faster lol.

If you do buy an es if its a v4 make sure your on broadwell-e bios capable board part from that there fine also to note if you do buy an es i dont think many gigabyte boards work with them sadly, i cant confirm as i run a x99 extreme 4 from asrock , if your going to buy a chip from ebay search for xtrememicro thats where i got mine from and the shippings fast and packagings nice i do recommend. but if u have any performance questions as i said below somewhere i daily a 2650v4 es so feel free.

Thanks for all the information man, I really appreciate it. The 2650v4 seems like the sweet spot in terms of cores/price/performance for a Xeon ES. The seller told me my board is compatible (I’m skeptical but worse case I ship it back). Any other advice for these chips? It doesn’t sounds like they’re too finicky.

all i can say for advice, see if it works on your board if its not asrock, if its a recent asrock on the 3.30 bios it should be fine and if it does work enjoy hopefully getting around a 103bclk and chat to me all day about es’s on crit i feel lonley being the only one